


what a mess i leave

by youcouldmakealife



Series: in taking it apart [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-20
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-24 03:33:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/934817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike wakes up angry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what a mess i leave

**Author's Note:**

> As always, [tumblr is here](http://www.tumblr.com/blog/youcouldmakealife).
> 
> Thanks to Clo, ever helpful and hospitable. 
> 
> Title is from Daughter's "Smother". Expect a lot of Daughter inspiration in these parts.

Mike wakes up angry.

“It is growing increasingly likely that I’m going to murder you,” Mike says, without opening his eyes.

He thinks that’s a fair statement, considering someone (one guess), has currently turned his comfortable, supportive mattress into a bouncy castle.

“Wake up,” Liam says, then lands hard way too close to Mike, knocks Mike in the ribs when he crosses his legs.

It is growing increasingly likely that Mike’s going to murder him. That wasn’t a bluff.

“Wake up,” Liam repeats, starts nudging Mike’s shoulder. Actually, nudging is too generous a term. He is poking. He is poking Mike’s shoulder like he’s five years old and it’s fucking Christmas morning.

“I hate you,” Mike groans, then feels sorry for himself because neither of them believe him at this point. 

He opens his eyes. Liam’s wearing his boxers and an old shirt of Mike’s, possibly because he had even the slightest inkling of what that would do to Mike. The irritation dries up, gone as fast as it arrived.

“Your alarm goes off in fifteen minutes,” Liam says.

“So why are you waking me up?” Mike asks. It’s rhetorical. He now knows, and he’s in favor of this development. Christ, the kid’s got to be running through a checklist of kinks or something. Mike’s not complaining. He just wishes there’d been less jumping first.

Liam grins at him.

“C’mere you little shit,” Mike says, and drags Liam in by his (Mike’s, _jesus_ ) shirt.

“Good morning,” Liam says, smiling against Mike’s mouth. 

“Shut up and take those off,” Mike says, tugging at Liam’s boxers. The shirt can stay. Mike is happy to have the shirt stay. 

There’s something particularly satisfying about sucking someone off when they’re wearing nothing but a shirt they stole from your bedroom floor. It’s loose on Liam, the muscles of his stomach jumping under Mike’s hand, the brush of fabric warm against his knuckles. He takes it slow, easy, Liam’s leg hitched over his shoulder and Liam trying and failing to muffle himself behind the shield of his hand, like it’s too early for moaning. It is never too early for moaning. Mike would live and die by that credo.

When Liam’s blissful and post-orgasmic, Mike crawls up the bed, straddles Liam’s sides. Liam watches him jerk off, half-lidded, tonguing his bottom lip, so fucking _slutty_ , and Mike comes half on the collar of his shirt, half across Liam’s throat, his chin, the plush of his lips. Liam idly licks at his mouth.

“We have time for a shower?” he asks.

“I fucking hope so,” Mike says. He thinks he got some come in Liam’s hair. 

*

They arrive to practice on time. That sounds like an achievement, but it isn’t. Liam’s in yesterday’s clothes, and he gets chirped pretty hard, while Rogers tries to give Mike a questioning look and Mike tries equally hard to avoid Rogers’ eyes.

Rogers has been taking Mike aside lately. At one point he asked Mike very seriously if he knew that Liam was using him as an excuse to hide something from Rogers, that Liam was saying he played video games with Mike when he was clearly doing something else. Mike laughed it off, assured Rogers that he wasn’t aware of any video game dates with the kid, that he’d try to keep an eye on him, and then got the fuck out of that conversation as quickly as he possibly could.

Driving Liam into practice in yesterday’s clothes is not a good way to punctuate that conversation, and if Mike pretends that Rogers didn’t notice Liam walking in a microsecond after Mike (subtlety has still never met Liam Fitzgerald), well, then he’s just lying to himself, and he tries to avoid doing that.

It’s a light practice, a lead in to game day tomorrow. Mike buys groceries on his way home, sneaks a pint of Ben & Jerrys into his basket, texts Liam to tell him to actually show his sorry ass face around Casa Rogers before they get Child Services called on them, and then eats his despair in the form of a pint of Chunky Monkey while watching home renovation shows.

It isn’t his finest moment, but sadly it doesn’t even crack the top ten of the most pathetic things he’s done lately. Those all involve Liam.

*

The Wild are in town the next day, and Mike works out longer than he needs to or is technically supposed to, because ice cream has shamed him, and because he hates those guys and he’s trying to cut down, just a little, on the fighting. He’s old. His hands are sore. He’ll knock people into the boards all the livelong day if that means he can let his knuckles heal up, just for a bit. A single day. One day of pain-free knuckles. He’ll be so good.

He forgot that the hockey gods are vindictive little bastards and that trying to bargain with them just leads to pain. 

He shouldn’t have. 

The first period’s fine. A goal apiece, a couple knocks thrown and taken, fairly even puck possession. Everyone’s playing nice and polite, like it’s fucking no-hit Juniors. It gets everyone a little too relaxed, a little too content.

In the second, Liam gets taken down.

Mike doesn’t see it, had turned to talk to Carlyle, but he catches on pretty fucking fast, first the indignant roar on the bench, then the general, sickly silence. What he does see is Liam on his elbows on the ice, blood dripping from his face, and the crowd’s gone silent too, until he manages to get up with the assistance of Jacobi, takes the towel offered him before getting gently pushed towards the locker room. They replay what happened while they break to clean the blood off the ice, Liam getting hit, a high shoulder clip from Sam Parkinson that sends him face first into the glass. When they slow it down, you can see his nose break on impact. They show it again and again, like they’re fucking revelling in it, the whole arena quiet, both teams quiet, while Parkinson’s escorted to the box with a fucking minor for boarding. The kid’s a sniper, not a brute, and that hit would have been considerably less disastrous on someone who wasn’t the size of a munchkin. It’s a fair call, probably, but Liam isn’t back on the bench at the halfway point of the second, and Mike’s getting tighter and tenser with each minute ticking down. Mike isn’t exactly meant to share the ice with Parkinson--any smart coach keeps his first liners as far as fucking possible from the goon squad, but on a fucked up shift change Mike manages to barrel into Parkinson, a kid barely older than Liam is. Hell, he’s still got fucking acne.

He’s big, almost as tall as Mike, but he’s a gawky big, all limbs. Skates fast, shoots pretty, probably couldn’t throw a punch to save his life. Has no problem with a high shoulder check, though, he fucking nailed that one. 

“You only hit people from behind?” Mike asks. “You too much of a fucking coward to actually drop gloves?”

If the kid was smart, he’d back the fuck off, leave this shit to his own enforcer, but he’s young and brash and probably thinks he’s invincible, and he doesn’t skate off, just turns to face Mike full on. 

This kid is no fighter, barely gets his gloves off, his hands up, before Mike’s got his knuckles against his face, the first punch glancing off his cheekbone and then the second one a more satisfying shot to the mouth. The shot he gets back is easy to deflect, is nothing, and Mike just makes sure he has a good grip on his jersey, can hold him tight, close, and mess up his snotty first line face. He goes down easy, too easy, he’s a fucking pansy, and Mike follows him down, hits him until feels something under his knuckles give. By the time they haul Mike off of him, he’s got blood on his hands and it’s not his, got blood speckling his jersey from when Parkinson’s nose started to bleed. The kid goes to his locker room with assistance, blood all down his front, face a mess, and Mike gets escorted right out the door, the building clamoring for something, more blood, as like as not, and Mike goes and sits in the locker room, puts his face in his hands.

That wasn’t his job. First liners are half off-limits as it is, the refs always faster to call shit done to them, the league more stringent about enforcing the repercussions, and if Mike didn’t break his nose he’d be surprised. Coach Mulligan is going to come in and tear him a new asshole, and then he’s going to get a suspension, he knows he is. His knuckles are throbbing from where Parkinson’s teeth must have grazed his skin. He can’t stop thinking about the startled, unprepared look in his eye when Mike first drew blood.

“Mike?” he hears, quiet, almost tentative, and looks up to see Liam, nose splinted, mostly cleaned up, though he’s still got some blood on his face.

“Hey,” he gets out.

“Jesus Christ, your _hands_ ,” Liam says, takes an aborted step forward before he stops, sort of hesitant. Mike’s hands are a mess. He looks like he’s been guts deep in someone.

“You should see the other guy,” Mike says weakly. It’s a bitter fucking thought.

He gets dragged into medical by his best friend the sadist doctor, hisses his way through disinfectant and gauze. The little fucker did get him with his teeth, but considering those teeth may well have hit the ice, he doesn’t think he gets to be indignant about it. Liam hovers, even after they attempt to shoo him from the room, first earnestly, then wearily. Liam has that effect. He’s got the start of a bruise coming up above the bridge of his nose, is going to have two black eyes, as likely as not. 

A broken nose for a broken nose. Poetic justice.

“You good, kid?” Mike asks, while gritting his teeth to avoid cussing out the man who controls his access to drugs.

“Fine,” Liam says. “The hell did that guy do to you?”

There are TVs everywhere around here, but Mike wouldn’t blame Liam for getting distracted by having his nose set. It’s not on Mike’s list of favorite procedures, sits way below the salt and burn shit they’re doing with his knuckles now. There’s no point lying about it, though, the first guy through the door is going to snitch, and if not the first, then the second, and so on. 

Mike scrubs a hand through his hair, gets a scowl, even though it isn’t even the hand they’re focusing on. Fucking doctors.

“Figured he’d like a nose to match yours,” Mike says. “I think it looks better on him, though, honestly.”

Liam’s quiet for a minute. “Did you break Parkinson’s nose?” he asks, finally.

“It’s very likely,” Mike says.

Liam just looks at him, silent. It’s uncommon enough to be unnerving, and for once Mike can’t really read him. “Okay,” he says, finally. 

Mike gets absolutely reamed out. Mulligan makes sure to do it in front of the whole team too, for maximum embarrassment. Mike deserves it, he knows he does, so he takes it, digs his nails into his palms and ignores the way the cuts on his knuckles pull, tight and sore. 

Liam comes home with him. Mike doesn’t even bother to argue, just feeds them sandwiches and ibuprofen. Liam moves around in his sleep, and Mike isn’t much better, so he installs himself on the couch, leaves Liam the bed, despite Liam’s protests, because if he smacks Liam in the nose in the middle of the night, he’s going to feel even worse about himself tomorrow.

He wakes up stiff and sore, his couch not comfortable enough for a full night’s sleep, stumbles to the kitchen to set the coffee machine. Liam comes out of Mike’s room when it’s on full roast, like he’s magnetized by the smell of coffee. He looks worse today, some pretty extensive bruising around his eyes, the full raccoon look, but he leans sleepily against Mike’s shoulder and makes himself a nuisance while Mike’s trying to pour them coffee, so he’s clearly at least mostly okay.

“Rogers know where you are?” Mike asks, when Liam is at least halfway to conscious.

Liam looks up, likely purely to give him a sarcastic look.

“Rogers know you’re safe?” Mike clarifies.

Liam rolls his eyes, but nods. Mike rewards his newfound ability to think of other people’s feelings with toast--he’s too fucking bagged to make anything more involved.

It’s an off-day, so they eat their toast at the table and then migrate to the couch with their mutual gripes, mutual soreness. Liam quickly figures out the position that is the most intensely, annoyingly cuddly, and also avoids hurting his nose. Mike tolerates it, but he puts his foot down when Liam tries to make him watch cartoons. He may be fucking a kid, but he sure as hell isn’t becoming one.

Mike gets a call from management around noon, and takes it, stoic. It’s two games. It could have been worse. Hell, Wild fans are probably going to be crying over how unfair it is.

Liam’s quiet when Mike’s on the phone, well-behaved, like Mike never sees him. He stays quiet even after Mike’s hung up, keeps his eyes on the muted newscast.

“You broke his nose,” he says, finally.

“Yeah,” Mike says. If he hadn’t, it would have been one game. Or a brush off entirely, maybe. A misdemeanor for instigation and a slap on the hand. 

“You broke his nose for me,” Liam says.

Mike could argue: it’s his job, he’s meant to stick up for his teammates, his entire purpose is destruction, retaliation, but he can’t say he was just doing his job with a straight face. Mulligan’s royal takedown made that as obvious to everyone else as it was to him that he took shit personally and he took Parkinson down too hard, that it was a fuck up. That he lost his shit because he saw Liam bleed. He knows that, and Liam knows that. He’s made that crystal fucking clear. 

“Yeah,” he says, finally, because it’s the only true answer he can give. “I did.”


End file.
